China purges top military after US intelligence revealed they had filled missiles with WATER instead of fuel and had a huge silo bunker with the wrong lids due to military corruption

China's recent “purge” of several top military officials came after an embarrassing mishap in which they accidentally filled rockets with water instead of fuel, according to US intelligence.

The news comes days after a surprise New Year's message from ruler Xi Jingping, who warned that “all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait” will be “reunified.”

The communist country's top lawmakers expelled nine senior military officers from the national legislature on Friday, state media reported, a move that usually precedes further punishment.

Many of the removed soldiers belonged to the Rocket Force, a major branch of the Chinese military that oversees tactical and nuclear missiles.

Now US intelligence claims military corruption led to the failures, which also included fields of silos in western China fitted with covers that prevented the missiles from being launched.

The purges are a setback for Xi, who has poured billions into buying and developing equipment as part of his modernization efforts to build a “world-class” military by 2050.

In line with these plans, Beijing's outsized defense budget has been growing faster than its economy for several years.

However, the recent demise of generals and suppliers of military equipment has shattered some of this aura and raised questions about whether there has been sufficient oversight of the massive military investments as China competes with the United States.

Since coming to power in 2012, Xi has launched a major crackdown on corruption among Communist Party officials and government officials, with the military among the main targets.

The nine generals removed from the legislature were from different military divisions; three were former Rocket Force commanders or vice commanders; one a former chief of the air force and one a naval commander in charge of the South China Sea. Four officers were responsible for the equipment.

Wei Fenghe, a former defense minister who used to lead the Rocket Force, has also disappeared.

When asked about his whereabouts, a Defense Ministry spokesman said in August that the military has zero tolerance for corruption.

His successor, Li Shangfu, was abruptly ousted as defense minister in October after also disappearing for months before returning, only to fall victim to the purge himself.

Shangfu had previously headed the equipment department. One of his then deputies was removed from parliament on Friday.

On the same day, Dong Jun, a Chinese ex-navy chief with a background in the South China Sea, was appointed Li's replacement as defense minister.

Corruption in the Chinese military is apparently so deep-rooted that it will change Xi's plans to take major military action in the near future. Bloomberg reports this.

Xi recently warned in his saber-rattling New Year's message that “all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait” will be “reunified.”

He said China's reunification with Taiwan is inevitable, as he addressed the nation less than two weeks before the Chinese-claimed island elects a new leader.

The January 13 presidential and parliamentary elections come at a time of fraught relations between Beijing and Taipei. China has increased military pressure to assert its sovereignty claims over democratically governed Taiwan.

China considers Taiwan its “sacred territory” and has never refrained from using force to bring it under Chinese control, although Xi made no mention of military threats in his speech on state television.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington DC did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.

In the longer term, analysts expect the chronic problem of corruption in China's military to persist because a number of root causes – including low officer pay and opacity in military spending – have not been addressed.

In his New Year's message, Xi also said the country's economy had become “more resilient and dynamic than before” after weathering a challenging 2023 at the helm of the world's second-largest economy.

His government has struggled to sustain an economic recovery since quickly dropping its tough zero-Covid policy a year ago.

But Xi said the economy has “weathered the storm” in 2023 and has become “more resilient and dynamic than before.”

Record youth unemployment and an ongoing debt crisis in the crucial real estate sector have also hampered Chinese growth.

Official figures released Sunday show a nationwide decline in factory activity that deepened in December, the third straight month of contraction.

Analysts have said Beijing could struggle to meet its annual growth target of around five percent, the lowest ambition in years.